Have you heard of Sprout Patterns? They’re a new part of Spoonflower, the custom printed fabric company, and they print your favorite patterns directly onto fabric that you designed! And, I’m excited to announce that you can now buy Cashmerette Patterns through them, too. We’re starting off with the Appleton Dress and Concord T-Shirt, and expect to add more patterns in the future.
How Sprout Patterns works
First up, you get to either design your own fabric, or pick from thousands of designs in the marketplace. I don’t know about you, but my biggest frustration when I’m sewing is finding exactly the fabric I want – in particular, I’m always looking (and failing to find) large, bold patterns on knit fabric. Sprout Patterns is like your fairy godmother: whatever you want, you can find, or even make it yourself. I recently took the Pattern Camp weekend workshop and had a whale of a time – it’s totally worth it if you want to delve into fabric design!
Once you pick your design or designs, you then get to play with the Sprout Patterns 3D model to see what your design will look like on the final garment. One awesome feature is that you can move the design around so you can get the motifs exactly where you want (no flowery boobs!), and you can use different designs for different parts of the garment – for instance, using a contrast for the Appleton neckbands, or the Concord T-Shirt sleeves.
Here’s a jolly pineapple dress that I whipped up with prints from the Spoonflower store:
And here is a large scale peony print that I designed myself, which is great for the Appleton:
I had the idea to use this capability to make a Breton t-shirt with the classic white band across the top (something it’s almost impossible to find regular fabric for), so I painted some watercolor lines, made up the fabric in Spoonflower, and here it is – I can’t wait to sew up a copy! You can buy this exact T-shirt here, and it’s also available in a light blue stripe (note the stripes look a bit fuzzy on the 3D model but they’re not actually).
All the current Cashmerette Patterns sizes are available, so you can pick from 12 – 28 and the cup sizes C/D, E/F or G/H, and you can pick any combination of the variations in terms of neckline, sleeve length etc. The pattern pieces arrive printed onto the fabric with a white outline where you cut – no need to have a huge cutting surface. You also get a copy of the PDF pattern, which you can use to add any markings (not necessary on these first two garments, but it is for patterns that have markings like darts or pleats) or if you want to make the garment again.
What about making adjustments?
Sprout Patterns have tons of plus sides – unlimited fabric possibilities! super fast to cut and sew! efficient use of fabric! However, the inevitable limitation is that because the pattern pieces are pre-printed, you can’t make every type of pattern adjustment. The good news is that with Cashmerette Patterns there are 27 possible sizes and you’re highly unlikely to have to do an FBA (the most common adjustment for curvy women). And it’s fairly easy to make adjustments like shortening the hem length, or grading down a size at the waist or hip. However, you’re not going to be able to lengthen anything, or do more complex adjustments. So, Cashmerette Patterns at Sprout Patterns are best if you’re either a straight Cashmerette size, or if you want to grade between 1 – 2 sizes in the body.
Which fabrics are available?
There are a really wide variety of fabrics available via Spoonflower & Sprout Patterns, from cotton to jersey to sports fabrics. I tested all of them to see which would work best for my patterns, and to see how well they held up to going through the laundry. By far the best for the Appleton Dress was modern jersey, which gives a really saturated print and stands up to washing and drying really well. It is a poly, but it has a really dry hand and is one of the “good” polys out there. The Concord T-Shirt also comes in the modern jersey, or in the performance pique which is a more athletic type knit fabric which also washes up well.
Finally, you can see Tanya’s amazing Sprout Patterns Appleton Dress over at the Curvy Sewing Collective today – I just love her fabric choices! She also has great in-action shots so you can see what the fabric that’s delivered to you will look like.
What do you think, will you be giving Sprout Patterns a try? Are there any other patterns you’d like to see included? If you do want to give it a try, use the code CASHMERETTELOVE to get 20% off! (Code valid until June 27th).
What a GENIOUS idea!!!
Sadly, I will be among those who are not able to use it as I always lenghten both bodice and dress lenght of your wonderful patterns with 1 to 4″ and use a bigger size in sleeves too… But still: Brilliant idea!
Ah yes, lengthening wouldn’t work in this case!
Oh for goodness sakes! If you want custom fabric, then just order that from Spoonflower. The idea of sewing is to customize your fit and make exactly what you want. You ought to be able to do your own fitting alterations and then lay out the pattern pieces yourself. This is another way to increase your costs and make it harder to get the proper fit.
It’s certainly not for everyone, but there are a contingent of sewers out there (especially beginners) who really love Sprout.
Yeah, “ought to be able to” and “actually does” are separate things 🙂 it’s a goal of mine to get better at fitting for sure, and for most pattern lines the adjustments would be too much for me to consider Sprout. But with Cashmerette pattern sizing plus the fact that these are knit patterns, I think I can get close enough and am willing to pay to see if this makes the least fun part of sewing for me (laying out and cutting) a bit easier. We’ll see!
Oh my goodness this is amazing and I love it and now I just need to get some alone time to spend hours in from of my pc and sort it out. I already made two Appletons and now forsee a gazillion more in my future!!!
So excited for this! Noticed a small typo in the text on the Sprout site for Concord: “pair them with floral skirts at the offie” => “office”.
Hi! Thanks for noticing this – it’s fixed now 🙂 I’m so glad you share our excitement for increased sizes (and cup sizes!) on Sprout! I have found that I am much more likely to sew a garment for myself now then ever before after skipping the annoying steps of taping a PDF pattern together, cutting out my size, tracing while making sure the fabric doesn’t shift and then carefully cutting each piece out. Though I enjoy drafting patterns to fit myself perfectly, a lot of the patterns on Sprout fit me as desired, with or without minimal alterations done on the actual pieces, and it saves me so much time! The knit Appleton and Concord are going to be wardrobe staples for me!
Hi Paloverde,
Have you considered that “making exactly what you want” might mean different things for different people? As in Jenny’s striped shirt with white band across the shoulders above (which I love, btw!), I’ve often had a certain idea for using a border print, or two different prints in a certain way, or maybe just one large-scale print, but without huge flowers in inappropriate places, and have wished for “trying out” the layout virtually before ordering fabric. Or I bought quite some amount of fabric only to find out that it wouldn’t really work with the pattern I had in mind, or the repeat was too large to match the print at the side seams with the amount of fabric I had at hand. Especially with larger sizes, pattern pieces do not always fit onto the fabric side by side very easily, and being able to make sure they do fit – even when fussy cutting for certain elements of the print – can take a lot of stress out of the process.
So I just love this idea, even though I don’t consider myself a beginner. And given that I can use Cashmerette patterns without any alterations, it would work perfectly for me. I sometimes do like to lengthen skirts, but with the Appleton it turned out that even the length is just perfect.
I do agree that it’s not really cheap, and I probably wouldn’t make a whole batch of everyday garments this way. But for one or two perfectly designed special occasion dresses? It’s a dream come true! So a huge thanks to Jenny for another fantastic idea for building a truly individual wardrobe!!! 🙂
Best wishes
Andrea
Sounds like a great idea for lots of folks, but in answer to your question – no, won’t be using the service. I’m 5’10”, so if length can’t be added, it won’t work for me.
I love the idea for a really special garment. I have already played with a number of options for the concord. I’m thinking Christmas gift, but I may not be able to wait…
Jenny this looks amazing. Is the quality of the fabric good though? I wouldn’t want to put all that effort into making a dress if the quality of the fabric is only so so.
Yes, the quality of the Modern Jersey is really good – I tried it myself to make sure!
This is a really cool idea! I am very interested in trying it out, especially since the layout and tracing is my least favorite part of sewing. So much so that sometimes I’ll put off making something that I like just because the idea of wrestling with all that fabric is a bit overwhelming. Plus, it’s so nice to know that large flowers won’t be positioned like boob pasties. lol Thanks for partnering up with them and sharing with us!